Love how you look

Maggie Alderson -Apr 22, 2012

Beth Ditto. Photo: Snapper Media

Beth Ditto breaks so many of the ''rules'' about who is allowed to be a pop star and a model in our fairground-mirror culture she has single-handedly rewritten the book. And, judging by the expression on her face in this picture, had a damn good time doing it.

She appeared naked on the cover of Love magazine a few years ago, but that wasn't a particularly special thing. When fashion magazines feature beautiful big girls, they're always photographed naked. Remember Sophie Dahl a few years back?

Then there's a big hoo-ha, as though it's a major statement - not only fat but also nude! Amazing! But is it actually because it's too hard to dress a bigger girl in designer clothes, which start at size ant and stop at small cockroach?

So it was properly brilliant when Ditto stole the show on Jean Paul Gaultier's runway a couple of years back, wearing gorgeous frocks he had designed especially for her. Not just bigger sizes but styles he had worked out - using all his experience and elan - to flatter her body shape. Not to make it look smaller, to flatter it. Different.

And that's exactly what she's doing in this picture here. She's ignored all the accepted ''shoulds'' for her height, width and even skin colour. Many of which I apply to my own short frame on a daily basis, such as avoiding horizontal accents and anything that could suggest squareness.

The witty tie print on this frock puts all the emphasis on Ditto's width, which would make me flee from it, even on a hanger, but if you can turn off the voice in your head saying that's wrong, it suddenly becomes right. She's made a feature of her wideness.

No amount of vertical accents, long chains and cunning application of jackets and cardigans creating an illusory narrow section in between - i.e. how I dress - is going to make Ditto look willowy, so the concept doesn't feature.

And the continuation of the print on the sleeves of her dress accentuates her wideness even further, until you understand it's not accidental. She really wants to look the shape she is. Oh lucky, lucky girl!

Other details that terrify me, which she clearly adores, are the bare white legs in between the black shoes and the black dress. The pancake flatness of those shoes. A bag roughly the same shape she is and plus-sized, too. And finally, her signature hairdo, a heavy fringe that curtains and emphasises the roundness of her face.

Every feature of her look - even her eyebrows - takes your eye from side to side and not up and down, making it absolutely clear she has no ambition to remind us of, say, Karolina Kurkova or Gisele Bundchen. She wants to look exactly like herself and more so.

I so admire her for this. Not just because she dares to do her own thing, but because she so clearly enjoys doing it. There's no in-your-face angry rebellion in this picture, just good times. And that's essentially what makes her look so great. Looking good comes from within. I so wish we could all learn that from her. I wish I could …